Value-added network

How it works

The VAN is a store-and-forward transfer. You drop a file. The partner picks it up. Receipts and mailbox ids replace a direct SFTP host. A VAN outage stops many partners at once.

A shipper drops 50 invoices on a VAN mailbox. Forty-nine are collected. One sits because the partner id is wrong. The VAN log shows the hold. A direct link would not have had a mailbox id to be wrong.

How it differs

A VAN is not a VPN. One forwards business files. The other connects networks.

Mailboxes fill. A partner who stops collecting blocks your sends.

Alert on age.

On the ticket

• The practical close is a log line: time, actor, byte count, result.
• Without that line the transfer is a story.
• With it, the next person can see whether this door did what the ticket claimed.
• If the path is shared, say so in the partner profile so a later change does not silently pick a different limit, key, or region.
• On a real ticket, write down the door, the byte count, and the clock.
• For value added network, that means naming the host or bucket, the expected size, and the time the other side must have a complete file.
• A progress bar is not that record.
• A 200 response that arrives before the complete call is not that record.
• If a retry is allowed, say how many and whether it resumes.
• If a person must approve the send, name the person.
• Partners who receive value added network files should match on hash or size before they import.
• A same-length corrupt file passes a size check and fails a hash.
• Keep the published hash off the only channel an attacker can edit, or treat it as a corruption check rather than a substitution check.
• When the path changes, new key, new region, new cap, update the profile the same day so the next run does not use a stale limit.